Toni Hartje - Upside Down Kitty

Using brushes, palette knives, sponges, and other tools, I apply acrylic paint on canvas or cradled wood panels to make my original paintings. The original pieces are professional scanned and museum quality prints are made. I proceed with a labor-intensive process to mount these prints to wood cradled panels and hand paint on top of the prints to add extra color pops, deepen the shadows, brighten the highlights and add flourishes and other playful details. I also transfer print images onto wood coasters. This process is also labor-intensive and time consuming and often the image gets dulled or damaged as part of the transfer process. All of the coasters require hand painting to correct or pop color and enhance or remake the image.